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have a calming effect on everyone, not just the victim of sickness. Just now Pell found himself in need of some calm, having just relaxed from his earlier concerns. He felt a gibbering terror run through his stomach. “Pont…” he mumbled, trying desperately to think of a way to apologize, but the healer had already turned his back and shuffled toward his furs. Pell watched him wide eyed, wondering what he could do to salvage this mess. After a moment he realized that the healer was once again simply partaking of his own medicine. Pell wondered a moment whether Pont might actual ly be sick and treating himself? O r was he only taking the hemp because he liked the way it made him feel? Pell resolved to collect some hemp for Pont when the leaves began to grow again—perhaps th at would soften Pont’s attitude towards him.
    Pell fell asleep that night with a persistent ly gnawing feeling of sick dread. Something terrible was going to happen …
     
    However, the next day passed uneventfully as the tribe rested, gorged on meat and generally laid about. The day after that broke clear and cold with a few high clouds but almost windless. Pell was set to building up the fire and soon the tribe was warming themselves about it. They breakfasted on the remains of the deer and pig but there really wasn’t enough to gorge everyone again. Roley looked about outside and proclaimed it a fine day for a “great hunt.” Soon the men and older boys had set about sharpening their wooden “char” tipped spears. The good flint tipped spears were checked and their bindings tightened. Pell and Boro practiced throwing with some spears hafts and Pell spent some time trying to get a better point on his two hunting spears. He scraped the points with a shard of flint and then charred them a little in the fire. He wished for a good flint point and once again wished that his mother had somehow saved him some of his father’s good flint spear points. However, she had used the last of them in trades long ago, trades that had helped the two of them out of difficult situations. Now when she needed something she couldn’t get any other way she was forced to mate with one of the hunters. Fortunately it seemed that the men always wanted sex, but none of them desired a long term mating with her . Pell worried about what would happen if she got with child again. Without a mate it would be Pell’s responsibility to be the man of their little family, something he was far from ready for. Pell was embarrassed to be grateful that , though she had swelled with child three times s ince Garen died, every time the child had come too early to live.
    The band of hunters set out down their little valley and into the big basin surrounding the great river to the south. When they broke out of the forest to reach one of the big open areas of the basin they saw it dotted here and there with animals grazing on the sere grass. Roley took out his “far-seer” and held it up to his eye. It consisted of an elaborately carved stick with a flattened area at the tip in which a small hole had been bored. Peering through the hole markedly improved the vision of many, producing a sharp image from a blurred one. Pell had heard some of the hunters discussing it one night. Tando claimed that it only helped the vision of those whose vision wasn’t very good. He said that, using the “far-seer” Roley only saw things that Tando had already seen. Tando said he had looked through the far seer and could see no better with it than without it. However, Pont said it had great magic and c hanted over it before each hunt.
    Pell had bored hole s in several small wood chips and found that they improved his distance vision without any magic words. He wondered if it worked like “squinting.” Members of the tribe whose vision wasn’t good could often be seen squinting at things in the distance. Pell thought they were looking through small slits between their eyelids like the little hole in